Reconstruction/Transcript
Transcript Text reads: The Mysteries of Life with Tim and Moby Arguing and booing is heard from behind the closed doors of the House of Representatives. The doors open as Tim and Moby are being escorted out of the room by Secret Service agents. TIM: Wow, it took them forever to realize you're not the Speaker. MOBY: Beep. TIM: What? You do not look alike. Tim reads from a typed letter. TIM: Dear Tim and Moby, what happened after the Civil War? Did the Union and Confederacy become friends again? From, Xavier. Um, not exactly. The South had surrendered, but that didn't mean that they'd changed their minds. An animation shows a Confederate representative smiling and waving a white flag at an angry Union officer. TIM: They still disagreed with the North about the role of the federal government, and African Americans' place in society. The Union officer notices the Confederate representative is holding a Confederate flag behind his back. TIM: If anything, years of brutal fighting had only deepened these divisions. To make matters worse, the South was in ruins. Its cities were destroyed, and its former slaves were now homeless and jobless. An animation shows a man sitting on the ground of a Southern city in ruins. MOBY: Beep. TIM: The nation turned to Abraham Lincoln to direct Reconstruction, the process of rebuilding. After all, he had just steered the ship of state through its greatest crisis. An animation shows Lincoln steering a ship that has an American flag as its sail. In the distance, the sun rises above smoking ruins on the horizon. MOBY: Beep. TIM: What? No, no. It's just a figure of speech. Anyway, Lincoln's leadership through the war had just won him a landslide reelection. So even though politicians bickered over how to rebuild the nation, they lined up behind the popular president. Hey, what happened to my ship of state? MOBY: Beep. An animation shows Lincoln driving a car with the presidential seal on its hood while politicians slap each other's hands and bicker in the backseat. TIM: A station wagon of state? All right. The animation shows the exterior of the presidential station wagon that Lincoln is driving. TIM: Lincoln's top priority was reunifying the states as quickly as possible. So he offered amnesty, an official pardon; to civilians who supported abolition and swore an oath to the Constitution. An animation shows Lincoln holding a Bible as a civilian swears an oath on it. TIM: For freedmen, liberated slaves, Lincoln offered jobs and free schooling. An image shows African American schoolchildren standing in front of a building labeled Freedmen's School. TIM: His Freedmen's Bureau also distributed food, clothing, and medicine to all needy Southerners. An image shows goods being distributed to needy citizens. TIM: Lincoln's instinct for compromise seemed to be winning the peace. When he was assassinated, the country lost its most moderate voice. The animation of the state wagon of state shows the car driverless and spinning out of control. TIM: Lincoln's vice president, Andrew Johnson, was a former slave owner from Tennessee. Johnson takes the wheel of the car and is now driving it while sweating nervously. TIM: As president, he stood by while Southern leaders passed Black Codes, severely limiting the rights of freedmen. The presidential station wagon rolls by unhappy African American farm laborers. A white man nearby holds a gun while they work. TIM: They needed special permits to travel or work anywhere besides a farm. Without a job, they could be fined and forced to work to pay it off. The presidential station wagon passes farm laborers with their legs shackled. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Yeah, it seems pretty close to slavery because it more or less was. The Union didn't fight a grueling war just to let the Confederacy get back to business as usual. The animation shows politicians in the backseat of Johnson's car planning something. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Riding a wave of Northern anger, a small group of congressmen took over Reconstruction. The politicians from the back seat take over the presidential station wagon from Johnson. One of them is driving, while Johnson sits in the back seat with his hands taped together and mouth taped shut. TIM: These Radical Republicans nullified Black Codes by passing the Fourteenth Amendment. It guaranteed all the rights of American citizenship to freedmen. A politician tosses the Fourteenth Amendment out of the window. Then the amendment is shown. TIM: Congress also took control of Southern state legislatures. An animation shows the Alabama State House. The presidential station wagon pulls up to it. TIM: They installed hand-picked officials to draft laws protecting freedmen. To enforce these laws, they stationed Union soldiers across the South. Soldiers march out of the station wagon and up to the Alabama State House as the car drives away. MOBY: Beep. TIM: The Radicals' hard line translated to real changes on the ground. Literacy rose as African Americans took advantage of free schooling. An image shows an African American graduate in cap and gown standing in front of Howard University. TIM: Hundreds won seats in state assemblies, and sixteen were elected to Congress. An animation shows an African American man casting a ballot and a line of African American and white men waiting in line to do the same. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Well, laws alone couldn't unify the country. The South still had completely different social values. Many white people found it hard to accept former slaves as their equals. An image shows a white man watching an African American man cast a ballot. He looks unhappy. TIM: The most hateful formed a terrorist group called the Ku Klux Klan. The white man's eyes are shown through a white hood. TIM: The KKK attacked and killed political leaders and other prominent African Americans. An animation shows KKK members riding horses and carrying torches. They are wearing white hoods and sheets over their bodies. Their horses are also wearing white hoods that have cross symbols on the foreheads. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Not all Southerners supported those tactics, but even moderates in the South saw Reconstruction officials as a threat. An animation shows a man watching another man nail an "Under New Management" sign onto the sign for his cotton gin. TIM: They called them carpetbaggers, mocking them as opportunists out for a quick buck. And anyone who supported their programs was a scalawag, a sneaky troublemaker. The man who nailed the sign appears with a carpetbag as his face. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Tension boiled over when the president removed a Radical Republican from his cabinet. Congress impeached Johnson, accusing him of breaking the law. He managed to stay in office but wasn't nominated to run again. An animation shows a Radical Republican pushing Johnson from the driver's seat and trying to throw him out of the presidential station wagon. TIM: His successor, Union general Ulysses S. Grant, finally brought some calm to Washington. The animation shows Ulysses S. Grant driving the presidential station wagon. Politicians sit calmly in the back seat. TIM: Working with Congress, President Grant used Union troops to fight the KKK. An animation shows KKK members riding on horseback. TIM: Within a few years, all of the Confederate states accepted the Fourteenth Amendment and rejoined the Union. Union soldiers on horseback chase the KKK members in the foreground as a map showing Confederate states in red changes to blue, the Union's color. TIM: But life in the South still wasn't much different than before the war. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Well, jobs were tough to come by for freedmen. Most had to sharecrop on the same plantations they'd worked as slaves. They would borrow a piece of land, borrow the supplies to farm it, and hope the harvest would pay back the owners. They rarely grew enough to repay the loans, and many went into debt. Images illustrate sharecropping as Tim describes. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Yeah, it was like a new form of economic slavery. Meanwhile, the nation grew weary of the Reconstruction project. An economic slump shifted attention away from the plight of poor Southerners. An animation shows politicians in the presidential station wagon reading newspapers. The paper's headline reads "Panic!". TIM: And Grant was plagued by scandals and accusations of corruption. A newspaper floats onto the car's windshield. The headline reads "Scandal!" and the paper blocks his view of driving, causing him to lose control of the car. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Reconstruction ended abruptly with the presidential election of eighteen seventy-six. Voting results were too close to call in several Southern states. The rival camps settled the dispute with the Compromise of Eighteen Seventy-Seven. A poster titled "Decision seventy-six, Hayes vs. Tilden" shows the presidential candidates staring at each other. The image pans out to show the men staring at each other from different sides of a table. TIM: The Republican candidate, Rutherford B. Hayes, was handed the presidency. An animation shows Hayes driving the presidential station wagon. TIM: In exchange, all troops and officials were removed from the South. The presidential station wagon arrives to the Alabama State House. All the troops and officials there get into it and it drives away. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Within months, politicians with Confederate values returned to power in state legislatures. To cement their control, they passed laws designed to prevent African Americans from voting. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Poll taxes set a fee for voting that many freedmen couldn't afford. And literacy tests meant that only the educated were allowed to vote. An image shows a white man pointing to a sign that reads, "Pay your poll taxes here." An African American man in line stands with his pockets inside out, showing that he has no money to pay the taxes. Another sign on the wall reads, "Take your literacy test here." TIM: These Jim Crow laws also set up separate public facilities for African Americans. An image shows separate fountains marked "white" and "colored." The word "colored" was used for African Americans at that time. The fountain for whites is newer, larger, and nicer than the old one for African Americans. MOBY: Beep. TIM: No, they weren't equal in quality at all. The forced division of races, or segregation, became an accepted practice in the South. Generations of African Americans endured life under this system, even as many of them tried to change it. Images show "white" or "whites only" and "colored" areas of train stations. The whites-only areas have a bench, while the colored areas do not. White people sit on the benches, while African Americans are forced to stand or to sit on their luggage. TIM: It took until the 1960s for these laws to finally be struck down. An image shows a bus depot. There is one bench, and white and African American people are sitting on it. TIM: Even today, we're still dealing with the legacy of slavery in America. We have a ways to go, but we are slowly getting better. WOMAN: Thank you, Mister Speaker. Moby takes a picture with a tourist who thinks he's the Speaker of the House. Moby waves good-bye to her after the picture is taken. MOBY: Beep. Moby has lipstick on his cheek and walks over to Tim. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Well, I still don't see the resemblance. Like, at all. Category:BrainPOP Transcripts